Hello from Germany! It is super awesome here. We don't have a ton of time to email but I'll make the most of it. I can read emails everyday, but we don't have wifi in the appartment so we have to go to the church which we go to a few times a day. The church is about a 3-4 minute walk from our appartment which is suppper nice --- expect it isn't a full church building it is the 2nd floor above a cafe and is pretty small but it is still really cool.
Ohh ya so I am in a city called Jena, Germany. It is at the south-eastern end of the border of the mission. Near Leipzig. It is a university town and so we talk to tons of students and it is super fun -- a lot of them speak english too which is kinda fun and weird sometimes. There are also tons of Arabic and Persain people that go to school here -- but not really a lot of Turkish :(. But also --- when me and my Turkish companions got here we were told that we are going to be focusing on German and that we can study Turkish on the side when we have time.
Our calls were -- i think -- offically changed from Turkish speaking to German speaking, but we can still learn turkish. Of course it depends on the area as well. Neither of my companions speak turkish, and Elder Mitchell's (my Turk comp from the MTC) companion doesn't speak turkish either and he is brownschweig. But Elder Mackay's trainer is is Neukoln and he speaks Turkish and they have a bunch of Turkish investigators there and the Turkish population is a lot higher. I'm sure I'll serve there at some point during my mission but I'm super happy here in Jena!
Our address is Ernst-Abbe-Platz 5 Jena, Germany . Only letters for here though-- any packages should go to the mission home. When you address a letter though make it Kirche Jesu Christi Elder Ezra Johnson. Because our mailbox has Kirche Jesu Christi on it
The day we left was a pretty long day. I have never traveled internationally before and so it was a long day. We left the MTC at 3am and traveled to the SLC airport in a bus -- our flight wasn't until 8:30 and security was a breeze, so we just hung out and then got McDonalds as our last meal (it was also kinda the only thing open that early). We flew to JFK and had a 6 hour layover there which was long as heck. Then we had the 7.5 hour flight to Berlin. I did not sleep very well at all on the flight, but the food they gave us was decent I guess. It took a while for us to get our luggage but we had no problems there. We then met with our Mission Presidency. President and Sister Leimer are awesome. On the first day we went back to the office and did a bunch of paper work stuff, and then my two MTC companions and I went to a hotel for a night. In the morning we had a really good breakfast at the hotel -- except we had to speak german with people haha it was weird. We then went around Berlin a little bit and went to the Brandenburg Gate and to a holocaust memorial it was really cool.
Then we got our trainers!
My trainer is Elder Kuttler and then I am in a trio with Elder Mitchell -- who I saw in the MTC for 4 days -- he was in the group that left right after we arrived. They are both super cool and I love them already. Elder Mitchell is from Clinton Utah, and Elder Kuttler is from College Station Texas and was in the same ward as Hough Elder (the hungarian that roomed with me in the mtc for a bit) so thats funny.
We then traveled to Jena -- which is about 3 hours of traveling by train and buses from Berlin. Our apparment is a little small but it's cozy and our view of jena is dope. We got back to the apparpment around like 6 here and so I just unpacked and got settled pretty much. We did have one appointment with a new contact that we went to right after I dropped my bags. They both spoke english and were just interested in what we did. Afterwards, they wanted to take a selfie with us becasue they think we are really cool cause we are americans. It was funny.
On Thursday (my first full day of actually being in Jena), we did a lot of street contacting (the whole zone was doing a lot of finding this day), and we were fasting the whole day too. We made 6 new contants which was super cool, I got to practice my german a lot with people on the street. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I can speak fine -- it is just really hard to understand native german speakers. I can pick out words and phrases and get the basic idea most of the timess which is good. It will come with time though.
We actually had stake conference this sunday in Leipzig and so we drove with a senior couple that is in our area to stake conferance. We got a new stake president too. It was all in german and I could understand a decent amount but it was exhausting to try and translate in my head for 2 hours and I am still just a little bit jet lagged / maybe I'm just tired idk.
It is pretty cold here but my coat is good and sweaters are good too. It is supposed to warm up this week too, like low 60s instead of the low 40s and high 30s like it has been. They don't really do halloween here, but there is another holiday on the same day as the "reformation day" so we will see how that goes --especially being a college town.
Our investigators/friends of the church are awesome! So since we live in a college town there are lots of people that are more open to change and are willing to listen and are looking for more in their lives which is really cool. Right now we are teaching 3 people that are progressing super well. We have Sochima who is from Nigera and he speaks very good english but hardly any german so we teach him english. Elder Kuttler and Mitchell have taught him quite a few times and he had a baptismal date set, but then he missed coming to church and so they took him off date -- when they told him that he can't be baptised unless he came to church he was really sad and recommited to coming to church every week-- so we will put him back on date soon! We are also teaching a man named Tiburce and he is from Benin (its next to Nigera) and he speaks german and french. I haven't met him but he is progressing very well and we are excited for him. The last one is named Liu, he is chinese and speaks decent english, but we have one the chinese called Elders from Berlin skype in with us when we teach him so that he can translate when Liu doesn't understand. We met with him yesterday and it went super well. We were teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was awesome to see his faith grow so much during the lesson. At the end, I was able to extend a baptismal invitation and he was very excited and accepted. We still have a lot to teach him and so we didn't put him on date, but we will in the soon future.
I love all of our investigators/friends and I love seeing them come closer to Jesus Christ.
I love you all!
Yasli Johnson
Pics:
1. Me and my new comps! Elder Mitchell on the left Elder Kuttler on the right
2. Our view from the apartment
3 and 4. Our apartment
5. My first döner
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